Easter monday being a rather dull day I went to the Batavia yard in Lelystad, Holland to see the progress on the build of the Dutch warship “Zeven Provincieen” and to take some photo’s of an old favourite, the “Batavia”. If there is any interest I can post some more photo’s. This is a nice view of the Batavia.
Julian
More pictures are always welcome. Good to know that there is such a beauty just around the corner! Is it still being built? It looks so complete from the outside.
SD
Let’s see, three masts, some gunports…just like the Constitution! [:)]
Nice pictures. Thanks!
Mark
Was there last December, my head bore a lump for 2 month afterwards from striking the deck beam on the 3 foot spice deck. Can’t wait for the Zeven Provincieen. I want to be there in 2015 when she is ready. Just imagine, a ship of the line that actually sails.
By all means yes!! I am just about to start building the Revell Mayflower and would love to see a ship od a simular period
Aha ! The evil old spice deck, well you are not alone in having tried to move the deck beams by head [:D]
Julian
I’ll try and get some more photo’s of the Batavia and the Zeven Provincieen up sometime this week.
Julian
‘Batavia’ is fully complete and in sailing condition, but the EU won’t let her sail in Europe (she is too original!). They put ‘Batavia’ on a transport ship out to Sydney Australia for the Olympics some years ago, and they sailed her there (“Nyaah Nyaah EU!!”). Revell Germany makes/made a model of ‘Batavia’ which is a pretty accurate representation (gotta hunt for one though!). I sure hope they do the same such time as ‘Zeven Provincien’ gets launched! An awesome ship, and a most suitable period opponent for you fans of ‘HMS Prince’ by Airfix! I understand however that they have had to start all over again with ‘Zeven Provincien,’ because it seems the old Dutch style of ship building is still a lost art. I would be very interested to see any new photos of ‘Zeven Provincien’ you have, as I am very interested to see how much they have had to compromise the design (hopefully, it will look just the same, and you wouldn’t notice a thing until you went below to look at the frames and futtocks).
Hello all -
Here’s an older thread on Batavia - there are pix of the Revell kit, as well as links to pix of the full-size replica:
/forums/618439/ShowPost.aspx
The Revell model is indeed a very good representation of the replica.
Jose Gonzales
She was still just an incomplete set of herring bone frames plus a few bottom planks last december. Stern decorations were being made in the workshop. They had to start over again with the frames because they got the shape of the bow wrong the first time around. They plan to cast her guns in metal, and not resort to the fiberglass stuff aboard the HMS Victory now.
When you’re 242 years of age, the replacement of iron by fibreglass may be a welcome relief on your venerable old decks[;)]
Well, only 17% of the Victory is 242 years old, and most of that is in her keel. I understand well over half of her dates to after the 1850s.
But it would be something if the two can come together. If the new Zeven Provicien can one day sail to Portsmouth and meet the Victory in person, and the two ships, roughly forming the opening and closing brackets of the great age of the line of battle, can come together to shake hawsers.
[;)]
Hmmm, I’m not too sure about that, the last time the Dutch sailed into one of our naval dockyards they ran off with our Flagship!
ps: Can we have back the bit of it that remains please.
I was wondering why the Victory has been bolted down to the dry dock.
[:D]
You mean this???
Uhm…no.
(sorry, couldn’t resist [;)])
Hi Bryan, I was half expecting a response from you, yes that’s the piece, the stern counter from the Royal Charles.
Must have been some guy that de Ruyter, talk about a Nelson Touch.
ps: How’s the Prince coming along?
I’d suggest the wonderful book “Anglo-Dutch Wars of 17th century” from Palgrave publishing to everyone interested with that crucial conflict. This makes a sound re-evaluation of the three wars.
BTW, ships very similar to Batavia were prowling the waters off Dardanelles and Crete at roughly the same time period, under the Venetian flag. Dutch/Scandinavian captains were reaping huge profits from hiring themselves to Venetians and seriously spoiling Ottoman war effort, which at the time, was besieging Candia [;)]
Yup, that is a good book, and an even better one (and much harder to find these days!) is a book called ‘Great Ships, the Battlefleet of King Charles’ by Frank Fox. Chock full of period drawings and paintings!! The problem with building a Dutch warship like ‘Zeven Provincien’ is that the Dutch at the time built their ships ‘backwards’ to now considered normal ship-building practice. Normally, a ship is built by laying the keel, setting up frames, and then planking. Dutch practice is to lay and clench the planks first, up to the level of the main wale, and then insert frames, keel, and other structural members afterwards! Sounds weird, but it is a classic example of the inherent conservatism of shipwrights the world over! Ships had been built this way in the North of Europe all the way back to the Viking Longships, and so, the Dutch ship-builders continued the tradition right up until the mid-18th century. One big benefit of this method, is that it inherently produces a very flat bottom and shallow draft for a given size/type of vessel, which was and is incredibly important in the shallow waters of the Netherlands coast.
Reference De Ruyter, yes, he was an amazing Admiral, and vastly unrecognized in these modern times. Frankly, I would rate him much higher in skill than even Admiral Nelson, as he was involved in literally DOZENS of enormous fleet actions, and usually successfully. It’s funny to think about it, as Trafalgar consisted of about thirty major warships on each side, yet the Battle of Solebay had a combined French/English fleet of 74 major warships against a (victorious!) Dutch fleet of 62, and hardly anyone recalls the action at all… the Four Days Battle pitted 85 Dutch warships against an English fleet that eventually numbered at least 74 major warships over a period of four days!! Yet Trafalgar is still credited as the ‘greatest’ of sea battles! And finally, when De Ruyter and his fleet not only sailed up the Thames and the Medway and destroyed or carried off a major portion of the English fleet, but actually REMAINED there for over a MONTH, blockading the Thames, terrorizing London, and raiding up and down the river at will! Yet so little is written of this period…sigh!! Speaking of the ‘Royal Charles,’ I remember seeing a very large scale model of this ship (in her earlier Cromwellian guise of ‘Naseby’ in Earls Court London at the boat show about ten years ago. I think the scale must have been about 1/50, as it was about 5’ long, was made of resin, and not only was remote controlled (they had a big indoor pool set up with fans for wind), and could tack and wear by radio, but had internal lighting, and a sound system with recording of seagulls, creaking spars and shouting seamen. Remarkable!! I spoke to the owner briefly, who was an elderly gent, and he told me he had spent about ten years building it from scratch. Such dedication!
No doubt more ships and more men participated during the pitched battles of the Anglo-Dutch war than during battles of the later wars of the sailing age. But that must be offset by the fact that during the anglo-Dutch wars, the average warship is a converted merchantman, and the battleline carried on average about 30 - 40 guns a ship. By the end of the 18th century, almost all major warships of specially designed, purpose built for war and even 64s are deemed too small to stand in line. During the Anglo-Dutch wars both sides threw what is effectively the majority of their battlefleet like battering rams against each other in single pitched battles, where as during Napoleonic wars, the far larger navies are strategically dispersed to multiple key points so that only a fraction of the main battlefleets are engaged in any one battle. So of course the scale of the naval war was far larger during the late 18th - early 19th century than during the Anglo-Dutch wars even if more ships and more men may have met at a single location during the earlier war.